American Blockbuster Movies, Technology, and Wonder
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MOVIES, TECHNOLOGY, AND WONDER MOVIES, TECHNOLOGY, charles r. acland AMERICAN BLOCKBUSTER SIGN, STORAGE, TRANSMISSION A series edited by Jonathan Sterne and Lisa Gitelman AMERICAN BLOCKBUSTER MOVIES, TECHNOLOGY, AND WONDER charles r. acland duke university press · Durham and London · 2020 © 2020 duke university press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper ∞ Designed by Matthew Tauch Typeset in Whitman and Helvetica lt Standard by Westchester Publishing Ser vices Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Acland, Charles R., [date] author. Title: American blockbuster : movies, technology, and wonder / Charles R. Acland. Other titles: Sign, storage, transmission. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2020. | Series: Sign, storage, transmission | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2019054728 (print) lccn 2019054729 (ebook) isbn 9781478008576 (hardcover) isbn 9781478009504 (paperback) isbn 9781478012160 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Cameron, James, 1954– | Blockbusters (Motion pictures)— United States—History and criticism. | Motion picture industry—United States— History—20th century. | Mass media and culture—United States. Classification:lcc pn1995.9.b598 a25 2020 (print) | lcc pn1995.9.b598 (ebook) | ddc 384/.80973—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019054728 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019054729 Cover art: Photo by Rattanachai Singtrangarn / Alamy Stock Photo. FOR AVA, STELLA, AND HAIDEE A technological rationale is the rationale of domination itself. It is the coercive nature of society alienated from itself. Automobiles, bombs, and movies keep the whole thing together. — MAX HORKHEIMER AND THEODOR ADORNO, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1944/1947 The bud get is the aesthetic. — JAMES SCHAMUS, 1991 (contents) Acknowl edgments ............................................................ ix PART I THE SPECTACLE INDUSTRY one. Blockbuster Ballyhoo ............................................. 3 two. Industrial Regimes of Entertainment ..................... 35 PART II THE RISE OF THE BLOCKBUSTER three. Delivering Blockbusters .................................... 87 four. The Business of Big ........................................... 124 five. Hollywood’s Return ............................................160 six. Cosmopolitan Artlessness ..................................... 191 PART III THE TECHNOLOGICAL SUBLIME OF ENTERTAINMENT EVERYWHERE seven. The End of James Cameron’s Quiet Years ............. 233 eight. The Technological Heart of Movie Culture .......... 266 epilogue. Exhausted Entertainment .............................297 Notes ........................................................................305 Filmography ................................................................ 337 Bibliography ................................................................ 347 Index ........................................................................ 373 (acknowl edgments) his book is the product of my boundless affection for movie culture. It equally emerges from an intellectual conviction that popular cul- T ture is foundational to the formation and understanding of our world, its pleasures and disappointments, its hopes and horrors, its privileges and strug gles. Affective attraction and critical distance are not opposing forces; they create an interlocking dynamic, a productive tension. After all, the goal of cultural critique is not to resolve contradiction but to identify forces at play, investigate them, demonstrate the consequences they have for the way we live, and help point the way toward a more equalitarian existence. Over the years, many teachers, colleagues, friends, and students have shaped my thinking on these matters. One towers over every one: Haidee Wasson. With her unsurpassed critical facil i ty that she keenly applied through countless conversations about this book, I know that what appears here has been improved immeasurably, and I thank her for that. Among the many dear friends who have expanded my outlook on the top- ics addressed here, most powerfully influentialwere Keir Keightley and Peter van Wyck. Both, in their own ways, helped me with their elevated levels of scholarly and civic conviction, boosted even further by their distinctive wit. Jennifer Holt’s remarkable intellect and spirit inspired me to sharpen and improve my arguments. I offer infinite gratitude to all three. At Concordia University, I ran ideas by scholars and received so much in return, most significantly from Krista Lynes, Jeremy Stolow, Fenwick McKelvey, William J. Buxton, Sandra Gabriele, Matt Soar, Kay Dickinson, Marc Steinberg, Joshua Neves, Masha Salazkina, Luca Caminati, Catherine Russell, Joanne Sloane, Darren Wershler, and Louis Pelletier. In Montreal other cherished inter- locutors are Will Straw, Joseph Rosen, Jonathan Weiss, Darin Barney, Carrie Rentschler, Matthew C. Hunter, Jenny Burman, and Jonathan Sterne. Farther from my hometown, but just as impor tant, are Greg Waller, Barbara Klinger, Julie Turnock, Rick Prelinger, John Caldwell, Lisa Parks, Vanessa Schwartz, Tom Kemper, Alison Trope, J. D. Connor, Jacob Smith, Erkki Huhtamo, Larry Grossberg, John Erni, Dana Polan, Fred Turner, Bill Hannigan, Carrie Hannigan, Andrew deWaard, Peter Lester, Brian Fauteux, Hannah Spaulding, Blaine Allen, Mike Zryd, Tess Takahashi, Lee Grieveson, Paul Grainge, Michael Cowan, Patrick Vonderau, Petr Szczepanik, Lucie Česálková, Yvonne Zim- mermann, Malte Hagener, and Vinzenz Hediger. The book leapt ahead dur- ing my year as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where friends and colleagues provided generous counsel, among whom were Greg Siegel, Ross Melnick, Michael Curtin, Bhaskar Sarkar, Bishnupriya Ghosh, Janet Walker, Peter Bloom, and Charles Wolfe. I am thankful for the excellent research assistance I received over the years from Zoë Constantinides, Charlotte Orzel, Smriti Bansal, Rob Hunt, Julio Valdes, Quinn Valencourt, and Ashley McAskill. The editorial and pro- duction team was outstanding, as usual, and I thank Courtney Berger, Sandra Korn, Liz Smith, Matt Tauch, and Kim Miller. Opportunities to rehearse the arguments included conference pre sen ta- tions at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (Boston and New Orleans), arthemis/Permanent Seminar on the History of Film Studies (Montreal), the Canadian Communication Association (Kitchener- Waterloo), the 3d flic Conference on Stereoscopy (Toronto), and the “What Is Film?” Symposium (Portland). Invited talks allowed me to refine the ideas further, most memo- rably at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Northwestern University; Carleton University; McMaster University; and Indiana University (for the James Naremore Lecture). Chapter 7 is a modified version of “The End of James Cameron’s Quiet Years,” in International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, volume 6, Media Studies Futures, edited by Kelly Gates (London: Blackwell, 2013), 269–295. “Senses of Success and the Rise of the Blockbuster,” Film History 25, nos. 1/2 (2013): 11–18, has been broken up and rewritten to appear in chapter 1 and chapter 4. x · acknowl edgments Early versions of parts of chapter 7 and chapter 8 appeared as “You Haven’t Seen Avatar Yet,” FlowTV 13, no. 8 (2011), www . flowtv . org, and “Avatar as Technological Tentpole,” FlowTV 11, no. 5 (2010), www . flowtv . org. American Blockbuster was made pos si ble by the Concordia University Re- search Chair in Communication Studies fund and a Social Science and Hu- manities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant. acknowl edgments · xi PART I THE SPECTACLE INDUSTRY (chapter one) BLOCKBUSTER BALLYHOO ou’ve just walked out of a multiplex movie theater having seen a Holly- wood blockbuster movie. This being the early twenty- first century, Y you’ve likely witnessed a motion picture packed with visually dy- namic scenes, saturated with color and sound. You may have been thrilled or dizzied by sprawling, swirling, and soaring images, the product of actual or simulated camerawork. And the appearance of action that ignores the laws of physics may have been inventive. Or annoying. Or both. You may have been underwhelmed by the newest multichannel sound system, which promised pinpoint locations for sounds but mostly delivered volume. You may have been impressed by the novel situations and visual effects, and you may have enjoyed spending time with a cherished performer or been introduced to new talent. The settings, situations, and characters may have been familiar, part of a gen er a tion ally expansive franchise and part of a seemingly complete rendering of a fictional world. Attending may have had more to do with a sense of duty and obligation to see the entirety of a franchise than actual desire for another installment in that story world. Or the movie might have been a stand- alone production, exploring what blockbuster aesthetics offer a nonfranchise tale. What ever sensations you have at the closing credits— the exhausting, endless credits that scroll through countless corporations, personnel, and legal waivers— you may leave with a feeling of wonderment about the film’s drama or boredom with the monotonously familiar narra- tive clichés. Skillful emotional tugs may stick with you for a time, as do the abrasive projections of brutality and destruction. Blockbusters, as we have come to know them, engage, distract, and transport us, often